


It's A Raymond Chandler Evening

by kittydesade



Category: Philip Marlowe - Raymond Chandler
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 00:44:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade





	It's A Raymond Chandler Evening

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Firerose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firerose/gifts).



Water dripped down the collar of my coat, shooting straight down the back of my neck like it had legs. Malicious little legs bent on making me as miserable as possible in the time it took me to smoke a damn cigarette. This rain came out of nowhere, too. I'd just gotten into the office an hour ago. It hadn't been sunny then, but the clouds sat on the rooftops and refused to budge and I figured I had a good day of cool shade and crisp air. No such luck, not that I knew it till I stuck my foot out the door and got five or six raindrops down my sock.

The storm pushed me inside. No one was going to come out in weather like this and my cigarettes were soaked. I might as well not be the only goddamned fool standing around in the pouring rain. It smelled like asphalt and piss.

I squelched on upstairs and wrenched the door open before I thought maybe it wasn't a good idea to make the building pay for my bad mood. Wouldn't be the first time, though. Coat on the tree and a towel under it to catch the water, then I ducked into the bathroom to get my wet socks out of my shoes before they started mold growing, or worse. Going barefoot around the office wouldn't be the craziest thing I'd ever done. Didn't expect anyone anyway.

Which was about the only excuse I had for standing there with my pants clinging to my ankles and my wet sock in my hand when someone's fist tried to break down my door.

"Just a minute," I yelled. That fist didn't sound like it'd wait another minute, but it'd have to. Shoes, at least, the wet leather pressing up against my feet and reminding me how cold and drippy it was outside. Whoever it was banged on the door again, the frame this time. The first time it sounded like they were trying to break the glass in. "Keep your shirt on already," I muttered, yanking open the door.

The man on the other side didn't look like the type to break a fellow's door down. Tall drink of water but there wasn't much to him in that cheap suit he wore, parts of it patched and faded. More obvious when you added the couple gallons of water all over everything. His fingers danced over his sleeves as he brushed the drops off his coat and onto my floor. "Mr. Marlowe," he intoned in a trained and competent voice. Between that and the phony British accent he sported I knew he had to be an actor, possibly with one of the companies. "I have a job for you."

"Well I sure hope you didn't come to sell tickets."

The stranger did highbrow disdain well, too. "I beg your pardon?"

"Never mind. Come on in." I let him in, since he was looking at me like I'd just wiped my nose on his dinner napkin. I could have manners too, see?

He sat down slow in one of my good chairs, settling what little meat there was on his rear down before he decided it would hold him or didn't have sweat on it and leaning back. I could have told him I'd wiped it off before he got here, especially for him, but I didn't. I kept my peace. And I wrung my socks out before I set them out to dry.

"What's this job, then?"

It couldn't be that urgent. The actor looked around at my humble office before he spoke, trying to remember his lines. "Mm? Oh, yes. My manuscript has been stolen."

And that was it. He looked at me, and I looked back at him. We both expected the other to cough up something useful. I gave in first, out of long practice of not starting arguments with potential clients I didn't have the patience to win. "What manuscript?"

"My manuscript... it's a play. I am a playwright."

He might have said he was a doctor or a politician. Playwrights might be important where he came from, but I wouldn't know one name from another and didn't care to go cool my heels in a nosebleed seat just because some lean-faced kid said he was the best thing since Shakespeare. "Where did you last see it." I could pretend to take notes while he rambled on about who hated him and wanted him to burn in the papers.

"I didn't lose it," the man snapped. "He stole it from me, I told you."

"Yeah, you said. Look, it's been my experience that when someone says something's been stolen, unless they had it grabbed right out of their hands, they just lost it somewhere. You sure you didn't set it down and walk away?"

His fingers drummed on the arm of the chair while he waited for me to see things his way. He'd have a long wait. "Yes, I'm sure. Graham's always been a bit of a prick, but this past week he's been unbearable. And now this. He's after my head, I'm sure of it."

It might be the accent, but he sounded more hysterical than I wanted to take on right now. He sat there cool as a Boston winter and spoke clear, but I couldn't believe someone wanted to kill him over a bunch of lines on paper. "What, you didn't give him enough of a role?"

The man sniffed. "He's not an actor, he's our backer. Well, one of them, anyway. The most important one," he added, just so I knew it. "He's putting up all of the money for the location and the costumes..."

"Can't have naked actors on the stage," I cracked. He glared at me.

This was looking more and more like not my kind of case. One neurotic writer and a money man making his life hell to watch him dance, I guessed, or because the writer was writing something nasty about the money man. It wouldn't come out to anything, and I'd spend a couple of days pounding pavement and talking to people I'd rather avoid. Fake people who put on so many faces they didn't know what their real face was anymore.

"Look, unless you have some kind of proof this is stolen, file a police report, there isn't much I can do." Not the whole truth, but it covered my bases as far as poking around where I wasn't wanted. It was slow, but it wasn't slow enough that I needed to be shouted at by people milking a giant invisible cow.

The drumming stopped. "So, you won't help me, then."

"Can't help you. Unless you think I'm going to get more play out of asking questions out of the same people you already threw down with, there's not much I'd be doing but poking around in corners. If you get something more concrete, come back and we'll talk."

Concrete wasn't what he wanted to hear. He wanted to hear I would do something about it, that's why people came here, so I'd wade in and fix their problems with a gun and a gimlet eye. Whatever a gimlet was. The writer hauled himself out of his chair and looked down his pointed beak at me. "I'm disappointed in you, Mr. Marlowe. I was told you were the best."

"You don't go after flies with a hammer," I told him. "Come back when you've got a case. Till then, might want to pay one of your actors or someone to go snooping around."

He turned and left without a further word or even introducing himself, which I thought was a little rude. Then again, I wasn't in show business, I was little people. To him, I mattered about as much as my wet socks.

Not so wet anymore. I took off my shoes and hung them above the heating grill to dry out the insides, wiped down my feet with a dish towel from the bathroom. Just my luck, all the dry spell the day was going to cough up happened while I was being yammered at by an overwrought writer. And I still wanted a damn cigarette.

I stuck my head out the window and looked around. The rain hadn't washed much of the dirt off the streets, just swirled it around a bit like a kid doing fingerpaints. Now the buildings all smelled damp and the awnings along the sides hung with bellies full of water ripe to collect mildew. The writer came out from under the awning of my building, flapping his hands and muttering to himself.

"Better luck next time," I muttered. "Good r--"

Someone, I guessed it was this Graham fellow he'd been griping about, came up in front of him from around the corner. Someone in a sharp suit carrying a pen like it was a knife, shouting words I couldn't make out from up here. Immediately the writer started to shout back, coming in toe to toe and meaning business. It occurred to me that I didn't want a fight starting right outside my building, case or no case, so I beat feet down the stairs. Several pairs of boots made the steps slippery, and I slowed down after the second near miss with a broken ankle.

When I shouldered through the doors, it was all over. People were popping their heads out of windows like gophers, maybe someone else had seen what happened while I was trying to set a land-speed record. All I knew was that the writer was stretched out on the pavement with the business end of a ball-point in his eye, and the man in the suit was nowhere to be found. Now it was my kind of case. Also a job for the police.

"What are you waiting for?" I turned on the kid in front of the apartment house next to mine. "Go call the cops."

He ran inside just when it started to rain again. Wash all the evidence away.


End file.
